The Dark Stranger

by Sara Seale

  “But she wouldn’t go without saying goodbye. Oh, Brownie, I must go and make sure.”

  “Well, hold your skirt up going downstairs or you’ll trip and tear it and I’ll not spend tomorrow setting the dress to rights for your wedding on Saturday.”

  “I’ll be careful,” Tina said, and bestowing a grateful kiss on Brownie’s neat head ran out of the room.

  She was half way down the stairs when she smelt burning, and smoke from the open study door sent her hurrying down the corridor. She remembered Belle was to have opened the safe for Zachary. Had she been careless, she wondered, and left the lamp turned up too high? The smoke and the strange unfamiliar sound which she could not identify did not in any way prepare her for what she found, and for one horrified moment she stood in the doorway seeing, like part of a nightmare, the flames licking along the carpet and Craig tearing down the curtain which seemed as if at any minute it would fall and envelop him with fire.

  “Craig! Craig! Come away! Come away before you’re burnt ...” she cried with terror and ran into the room.

  He turned at the sound of her agonized voice and for a split second saw her standing there in the wide, flimsy skirt which was already fluttering in the draught.

  “Get out of the room!” he shouted, and as she seemed too dazed to obey he crossed the room in one stride and thrust her roughly towards the door.

  “Tell Zachary to bring extinguishers,” he said, and pushed her into the corridor and shut the door on her.

  She ran into the hall and tugged at the brass bell which would summon help at once and was already detaching one of the fire extinguishers from off the wall when Zachary, followed by a couple of startled maids, made a hasty appearance through the baize door.

  “The study,” she cried. “It’s on fire and Mr. Craig is shut in there. Hurry, hurry!”

  Zachary had a second extinguisher off the wall before she had completely detached the first, and together they ran back to the study, he with his gaunt shadow leaping before him, she in her billowing skirt like some frightened sylphide.

  “Stay outside, miss, and hand the extinguisher in to me when I call for it,” Zachary said before he opened the door. “That dress of yourn would go up like tinder.”

  It seemed to Tina that she stood for an age in the corridor, shivering in her thin frock, tormented for Craig’s safety. The maids with more extinguishers were waiting beside her when Zachary opened the door and demanded another.

  “We’m getting it under,” he said cheerfully, tucking a third extinguisher under his arm, and disappearing from view, and in a little while he came out again leaving the door open behind him.

  “ ’Tes out,” he said laconically and ordered the maids back to the kitchen.

  “Mr. Craig?” Tina’s lips moved with difficulty, still stiff with fear, and Zachary patted her shoulder in passing.

  “ ’Ee’ll be out in a moment. Maister says for you not to go in in case there’s a spark to catch that dress of yourn. I’ll be back later to clear up.”

  She stood stiff and tense against the wall waiting for Craig and when he came she stared at him speechlessly, seeing the dirt and grime which streaked his face and the scorched cuffs of his coat, then she ran to him with a little cry and flinging her arms round him dung with a desperation that was beyond reason. Tears tasted salt on her lips as she kissed him with a passion released by her own frantic fear, and as he held her to him he could feel the little sobbing breaths she took.

  “Now, look, this must stop,” he said gently when, spent, she just stood weeping against his breast. “It all looked worse than it really was. I was much more concerned for that frock of yours. Why are you wearing such an unsuitable creation for a quiet evening at home?”

  “It’s my wedding dress,” she said forlornly.

  “Your wedding dress?”

  “You shouldn’t really be seeing it. It’s supposed to be unlucky. I put it on for Belle but she never came. Has she gone, Craig?”

  “Yes, she’s gone.”

  “Without saying goodbye?”

  His eyes were stern.

  “I shouldn’t let it trouble you. I caught her pinching the jewels and the pay roll from the safe and told her to get out. She knocked the lamp over. That’s how the fire started.”

  “Oh, no...” Her tears had ceased, and there was a hurt and shocked note in her voice but no surprise. Craig realized a little grimly that Tina’s illusions about her stepmother had gone a long time ago.

  “I think we’d better stop standing in the corridor and find somewhere warmer,” he said then, and she suddenly saw his hands.

  “You’re hurt!” she cried and he thrust his hands in his pockets.

  “A little burnt but nothing to worry about,” he reassured her. “Brownie will soon fix me up as she did when I was a boy. Now run along to the living room, Tina. I’ll just go and get cleaned up and then I’ll join you with something to put heart into us both. Run along.”

  She was standing in the middle of the room, her hands folded before her and her eyes fixed on the door when he rejoined her. She watched him anxiously, but he looked much as usual. His hands were bandaged but he had cleaned the dirt from his face and changed his scorched coat for another. The bright handkerchief she first remembered was knotted round his throat in place of a tie.

  For a moment he paused to look at her, seeing the dress in all its fresh beauty, then he turned to take a tray from Brownie who had followed him into the room.

  “Strong black coffee laced with brandy,” he said setting the tray on a table by the fire. “That will soon do you good, Tina.”

  “Clementina Linden!” Brownie exclaimed. “You should have gone straight upstairs and changed that dress. Don’t you know it’s bad luck for the bridegroom to see it before the wedding day?”

  “He’s already seen it, so I can’t see that it matters now,” said Tina. “Are his hands bad, Brownie?”

  “No worse than when he scorched himself with firecrackers when he was ten years old. What you need to worry over is that dress. There are black marks on the back and the hem is torn. You might have known better, Craig, than to put your arms round her before you’d cleaned off the dirt.”

  Brownie’s tartness brought everything back to normal, and Tina began to giggle with pure relief.

  “Oh, Brownie, and you said you weren’t going to spend tomorrow setting the frock to rights if I spoilt it! But you will, won’t you? I couldn’t have black marks on my back for all the congregation to make jokes about while I’m standing at the altar.”

  “H’m ... best give her some coffee, Craig, she’s beginning to talk silly,” Brownie said with a sniff, then her small face puckered in a smile. “Very well, miss. I’ll have to do what I can, I don’t doubt, for you’d only make matters worse yourself. I’m going to bed, now, and if you spill coffee on that dress, Tina, I’ll tan the hide off you. Good night to both of you and try to be sensible.”

  “What do you suppose she meant by that?” asked Tina when the door had closed.

  “I’m not sure,” he replied non-committally. “Sit down and drink your coffee now, and remember Brownie’s other injunction not to spill it.”

  She sat on a low stool by the fire and sipped the coffee he gave her. Now that the tension was over she was very quiet, watching him under her lashes and wondering what he was thinking as he sat in his usual chair, his face dark and unrevealing above the bright handkerchief.

  “Tell me about Belle,” she said. “I suppose I shouldn’t have let her have the keys, but I wanted to show her my dress and there wasn’t time to wait for Zachary as well.”

  “You weren’t to know,” he replied absently. “One doesn’t suspect one’s relations of—”

  “Stealing?”

  He focused his attention again.

  “She didn’t call it that. She said it was loot, and perhaps it was. I let her keep the rubies.”

  Tina’s eyes widened. It was not in her knowledge of him to repay a w
rong with generosity.

  “I’m glad you did,” she said softly. “Perhaps she was driven to what she did.”

  His eyes were a little mocking.

  “Meaning I drove her to it by my refusal to help? It may interest you to know, Tina, that I’d written a cheque for three thousand pounds to be paid into her account. I came back early to give it to her.”

  “Oh, Craig!” That must have been bitter indeed, she thought, and knew that at last Belle had hurt him. “What did you do?”

  “Tore it up, naturally, and told her to get out. Does that shock you?”

  She put down her empty coffee cup and spread her wide skirts carefully on either side.

  “No,” she said. “I think your treatment of Belle has been right all along. I should never have asked you to keep her here.”

  “If I remember, you made it a demand,” he said, smiling faintly. “You would remain engaged to me as long as Belle stayed, you said. You indulged in a little pirate stuff yourself that night, Tina.”

  She jumped up suddenly and began moving round the room, fingering the tapestries, picking up small ornaments and putting them down again, aware that after tonight she could never feel at such ease with him, for had she not already betrayed herself in that moment of fear outside his study.

  “The dress is very lovely,” he said, watching her. “When I came into the room just now and saw you standing there with your folded hands and your long throat I thought you looked like a forsaken ballerina.”

  She turned to look at him, aware, before she saw the expression of his eyes, of a new quality in him.

  “Did you?” she said uncertainly.

  “Yes. You’re looking rather like one of those lost sylphs now. Tina, come here.” She crossed the room slowly and stood beside his chair and found him regarding her with that disconcerting vivid blue gaze. “When you ran to me after the fire, so afraid for my safety, you kissed me as if—as if you meant it. Was it—was it just fear that roused you to passion?”

  She dropped to her knees beside him, and her white dress billowed like foam behind her. The long, soft hair fell across his knees as she bowed her face in her hands.

  ‘Oh, Craig, it’s no use,” she said. “You were bound to discover my secret sooner or later. I—I’m not very experienced at hiding things. Belle found that out.”

  He raised her face to look into her eyes.

  “Belle found what out?” he asked a little harshly, and the color mounted under her fair skin.

  “That I loved you,” she said simply. “You musn’t mind, Craig. You see I’ve always been haunted by the Pentreath women—the poor slut Adwen’s father married, your own mother who built the little temple to have something of her own—even Belle who perhaps couldn’t give affection because she could never find it.”

  His dark face wore a curious expression.

  “But why should you imagine you would be like any of them?” he said. “You surely know me better than to think I would neglect you, whatever Belle may have said.”

  “Not neglect,” said Tina apologetically. “But you see, you aren’t in love with me.”

  Suddenly the anger was back in his eyes.

  “Of course I’m in love with you, you little fool!” he said roughly. “You don’t suppose my only reason for marrying you is to give you a home, or alternatively, to pick a wife for the strange motives you think common to all Pentreaths?”

  Her eyes were bewildered.

  “But how could I think anything else?” she asked and the beating of her own heart seemed to her as loud as the ticking of the many clocks. “You never made love to me or—or even kissed me until that moment when you did it in a rage.”

  He took her face between his bandaged hands arid his eyes were gentle again and his mouth inexpressibly tender.

  “But, my darling, the only reason I didn’t make love to you at first was because I felt I’d rather forced the situation on you. I thought if I made no demands it might convince you in time that I wasn’t simply the pirate you’ve always thought me. Did you never understand that you’ve always been precious to me?”

  “The cuckoo ...” she said slowly “... building a hedge round the cuckoo to hold fast to the spring ... long ago you said that to me...”

  He drew her up into his arms and his mouth was gentle as never before on hers.

  “That should have told you,” he said. “I was the one to be afraid, not you, sweetheart. Only a week ago I thought you were going to ask me to release you. Could a marriage work, you asked me, when one was unsure and in the dark.”

  “And you,” she answered, resting her head in the crook of his shoulder, “said yes as long as one didn’t expect too much. I thought it was a warning.”

  “I was thinking of myself when I gave that advice,” he said. “I hoped in time you’d come to love me, Tina, but I didn’t expect miracles at once.”

  “Miracles are really very simple,” she sighed. “They happen in spite of you and all in a minute.”

  “Yes, perhaps that’s true. I think I must have loved you when you were sixteen, and I saw you for the first time by the magnolia tree stretching out your hands to catch the blossom. I wanted to give you all the things I’d missed, and make safe some place for you to lay your affections...”

  She turned her lips to the dark cheek so near her own. The doubts and the long troubled months were no more than pale ghosts to vanish in the sunlight. Had he not been there all the time, the dark stranger of her fortune?

  “Home is where you belong you told me once,” he said, his hands at her breast. “That should have come true for you at last.”

  “Home is also where the heart is and that is here and now and forever as long as you live,” she answered.

  The burnt-out wood on the hearth crumbled to a pyramid of fine ash and all the clocks in the room began to strike the hour, one after another.

  THE END